


Tripping Over Thin Air

by nancynotruth



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And that's not necessarily a good thing..., Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Domestic Fluff, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Job Five!!, Grace is doing her very best, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Light Angst, Loss of Control of Powers, Lots and lots of ghosts, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, POV Multiple, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Bonding, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, because he's basically the only sibling with even an ounce of self control, for basically everyone but Ben, sibling dynamics, the apocalypse never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28678668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nancynotruth/pseuds/nancynotruth
Summary: Luther steps out of his room and into what seems like a (very aggressive) invisible training course.Diego, much to his embarrassment, is being chased around the room by his very own knife.Allison's worst nightmare is coming true, as for the second time in a year she lies on the floor fighting for her life.Five has been standing in the same spot for four and a half hours, kept completely immobile by some invisible force, but it could be worse. At least he's still able to drink his coffee.Something invisible has taken Vanya's violin, and none of her siblings are coming to help her. She didn't really expect them to, but still.Grace isn't sure why her sensors aren't picking up on the obstacles in her path before she runs into them, and she's also not sure why pieces of her skin keep coming unstuck. At this rate, she'll be sewing until next year!Klaus just wants to sleep, okay? He's been clean for four entire months. What else do you want from him?And Ben? For the first time in almost 20 years, Ben just touched a wall.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Everyone, Ben Hargreeves & Everyone, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Everyone, Grace Hargreeves & Everyone, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Luther Hargreeves & Everyone, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone, Vanya Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 12
Kudos: 171





	Tripping Over Thin Air

**Author's Note:**

> So, so many thanks to my fantastic beta reader, n0ts0sane (on tumblr).

Luther’s eyebrows furrow as his chest hits the first patch of hard air. He looks down at nothing, shrugs, and keeps walking. He was taught at a young age that he could get past practically anything just by walking forwards. In fact, Luther’s only been successfully halted by brute force twice: once by a charging elephant on a particularly messy mission, and once by Diego when they were around eight years old. Diego still lords that over him. 

Unfortunately for Luther’s invincibility record, on his next step his shin bangs into something, and he goes down hard. His first thought is that he’s glad Diego isn’t here right now. His second thought is of his first week after being injected with the serum, when he was adjusting to his new top-heaviness and collided with practically every antique in the house. He’d thought he was past that. What had he tripped over this time? 

Luther raises his head slightly to look behind him, expecting to see a high heel Klaus had left in the middle of the floor or maybe one of Diego’s knives. But, however much he cranes his neck, the hallway is completely empty. Great. Now he’s tripping over thin air.

How is he supposed to save lives if he can’t walk down a hallway? 

Luther sighs and plants his hands under his shoulders in a perfect pushup position. But his bad luck hasn’t run out yet. A couple of inches up, his head ricochets off something and slams back into the ground. He lays there for a few moments, dazed, a thin trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth (because of course he just had to bite his tongue) and onto the carpet. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. The hallway is definitely empty, but somehow he’s under attack. If his father were still alive (and Luther wakes up every day hoping his death was all just a bad dream), Luther would think that the hallway had been converted into a training obstacle course overnight. 

Luther takes a deep breath and pushes himself slowly off the ground. This time, he manages to get to his feet with no resistance. He surveys the empty hallway and cracks his knuckles. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to handle himself in a fight. Bring it on.

He soon realizes that he’d severely underestimated his enemy’s strength. Walking through the hallway is like battling Ben, but without any clue where the next tentacle will be. Luther crashes into first one wall and then the other like a hapless victim in a slapstick skit. He falls to the floor with a massive weight pinning him down, forcing him to drag himself along the balding rug. Sharp, invisible points like nails scratch their way down his face and tear through his coat. By the time he gets downstairs, he’s amassed a black eye and a twisted ankle on top of his bleeding tongue and aching head. 

Luther collapses onto the bottom step, tucking his chin and folding his arms over his head to protect his face from the painful attacks. He sighs when he hears Diego crashing around in the other room, screaming like a little kid. Luther doesn’t exactly want to go back to the moon, and he doesn’t want his siblings to move out or stop visiting. But sometimes, all he wants is a moment of peace and quiet.

Diego screams again and sharp nails rake their way through Luther’s gloves. Luther closes his eyes and lets his shoulders relax, defeated. He wishes he knew what was happening and how he could stop it.

Okay, so Diego doesn’t quite know what’s happening. He’s thrown knives at the wall millions of times, right? The wall is literally covered in puncture wounds, just like the walls in every other room of the house. Except the kitchen. Mom doesn’t like it when Diego throws knives in the kitchen. 

Anyway, the point is that he’s been throwing knives at walls for basically his whole life, because his dad gave him his first set of knives when he was, like, two (who does that?). He’s good at throwing knives. He’s superhumanly good at throwing knives. He can’t remember the last time one of his knives went somewhere he wasn’t aiming, because it’s never happened. He’s good at throwing knives. It’s one of the only things he’s good at. 

So why the hell did the knife he was aiming at the wall stop in midair? Maybe he could write that off to unconsciously using his projectile powers or something. But he doubts that he’d ever unconsciously stop a knife midair and then make it chase him around the living room. Plus, he keeps bumping into things that definitely aren’t there. And he’s pretty sure he just felt a hand grab his arm. 

Diego does not want the cause of death on his autopsy to read “killed by invisible crazy person with own knife.” He’s already the laughingstock of the police department. Plus, he’s sure that he’d spend his entire afterlife with Ben and Klaus laughing themselves stupid at his expense. 

It would be nice to see Ben again, though. 

Sometimes, Ben tries to remember what pain feels like, but he can never quite manage to recreate the feeling in his mind’s eye. Even when Klaus had made him corporeal on the day they’d stopped the apocalypse the pain had been muted. Dull. Unsatisfying. But now that Ben is experiencing pain again, he doesn’t understand why he ever missed it. He feels like Luther just punched him in the face with brass knuckles.

Maybe the pain is clouding his mind but Ben can’t figure out what just happened. One minute, he was walking out of Klaus’ room, sick of listening to Klaus snore like a bear with sleep apnea. The next, he was knocked backwards onto the floor like he’d just walked into a wall. Which he had. But this was like he’d walked into a wall and made actual contact. Impossible? Probably. But you never know.

Ben takes a few more seconds to let the pain subside, forces his chest to rise and fall even though he can’t take in air. Talks himself through one of the meditations he’d been forced to learn during Klaus’ third rehab. Mumbles a few of Five’s favorite profanities, then yells them when he remembers no one but Klaus can hear him. When the pain has dulled to an ache, Ben steels himself, reaches out a hand…and touches the wall. Ben touches the wall.

“Klaus!” He calls, scrambling to his knees and pressing his body up against the wall like he’s on the gravitron. He and Five used to sneak out to the fair and go on that ride until they puked. Good times. 

Klaus feels like he’s about to puke. He’s gotten what? Three hours of sleep? And now Ben is yelling his name like he's Jack and Klaus is Rose. Klaus has always thought that he’d make a damn good Rose, but now was absolutely not the time. 

Klaus rolls over to flip Ben off, but then the bed ends and he just keeps going. He barely has time to register that he’s falling before all the air gets sucked out of his lungs. He blinks his eyes a few times and sees Ben hugging the wall like a randy teenager with his first date. So, obviously, he’s still dreaming.

Dream or not, Klaus is way too tired to get back up on his suddenly very tall bed. He sweeps his hand around the floor, not willing to open his eyes, and finally finds something that feels like one of Allison’s skirts. A silk one, if he’s not mistaken. Klaus always knew that leaving all of his clothes on the floor would come in handy. 

Klaus wads the skirt up and stuffs it under his head, then curls up in a ball. Just before he loses consciousness (or doubly loses consciousness, because this is still probably a dream), he hears the door creak open. Weird.

Down the hall Allison also hears the door open, but doesn’t pay much attention. She’s looking for the skirt Patrick gave her on their first anniversary. She knows she’d ironed it last week, and hung it up right next to her plaid skirt…which wasn’t there either. 

Allison takes a deep breath and brushes her hair back from her forehead. She is not going to barge into Klaus’ room, and she’s definitely not going to Rumor him into never stealing her stuff again. She’s in therapy. She’s matured. She’s stopped doing stupid things like punching her idiot brother who stole her one reminder her of her briefly happy marriage.

Oh, screw it.

Allison wheels around on her stiletto, but halfway through her first step she slams into…something. Her heel snaps faster than her temper, and she’s on the ground before her brain processes the fact that she’s falling. As she lays there, dazed and disorientated, something that feels like a hand presses down over her mouth.

She flails at the invisible person holding her down, but every movement uses up oxygen and the hands are still pressing down. Pressing down. Allison’s on the floor, helpless, alone, and slowly suffocating. Again.

She kicks out violently, putting every bit of her Umbrella Academy training into defense. Too bad she’s only been taught to fight with a team. Still, the hands are pressing down on her, and in her oxygen-deprived state she knows whose hands those are. You don’t get to cry about this, she thinks, desperately heaving her body to the side. You’re the one who’s killing me. You don’t get to cry about this, Vanya.

“They want me,” Vanya mutters to herself for the fifteenth time, pacing across the front stoop. “They don’t hate me. They said I could come over. They said I could just let myself in.” 

She wraps her overcoat tighter around her violin case, and stares up at the stormy sky. 

“I can’t go back out. If I go back out I’ll get wet, and my violin will get wet, and I promised Ben I would play for him today.” 

She’s been talking to Ben—kind of—ever since the day she almost destroyed the world. According to Klaus, he says all kinds of nice things. He’s said he loves her practically every day, which is nice, if a little disorientating. Vanya and Ben used to get along well, but Ben was always so tired after training. Most of the time they’d spent together was just her playing the violin while he read. Klaus says that’s what they’re doing now, but for all she knows Ben isn’t even there. Maybe Klaus is just being nice, and Ben actually hates her playing. Maybe it makes him sad, and he leaves the room. It seems to make Klaus sad when she plays. 

“They want me,” she says again, but this time her voice is softened to a whisper. “I’m their sister.” 

Yeah, but when has that ever mattered? 

Vanya’s shoulders slump as she turns towards the road. Maybe those pills had helped with her anxiety. But really, how unrealistic is she being? She’s spent her entire life being turned away, and now not even Pogo was here to welcome her. Because she’d killed him. She’d almost killed them all. 

Vanya falls when she runs into her first solid patch of air. She hunches herself over her violin as she goes down, landing hard on her elbow and hitting her head on the stone steps in the process. Oh, well. She doesn’t really care what happens to her, if her violin is safe.

She pushes herself to a sitting position with her good arm, blinking blearily at the spot where she’d definitely run into something. She’d probably been looking down and just hadn’t noticed the pedestrian. She looks up and down the street, but the fact that she doesn’t see anyone doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is always rushing. Vanya is slowly beginning to realize what it means to rush after spending so many years on depressants, but she still doesn’t understand it. The world isn’t ending, at least not anymore. She has time. 

Time to walk away from this godforsaken house and try again in a few weeks. Her siblings will still be there. Together. Without her. 

She pushes herself up and starts to walk towards the road, bad arm raised weakly in a cab-hailing gesture and good arm wrapped securely around her violin, when something wrenches her violin out of her grasp and leaves it hanging in midair. 

Vanya stops breathing. 

“No!” She screams, lunging for the suspended violin case, but it jerks just out of her reach. “Give it back!” 

The violin case rises into the rainy air, higher, higher. Vanya jumps, scrabbles at whatever invisible entity was holding it, screams for help at the top of her lungs. Nobody comes. Not Luther, not Allison, not even Five. 

“Please, somebody,” she sobs, sinking to the ground as her knees give way. “Please.” 

The violin case wavers, shakes, and then begins to fall. Too far away for her to reach in time.

Vanya shrieks. 

And all around her, the rain stops. 

In the kitchen, Five hears the scream and feels the shockwave. He grimaces and takes another sip of his coffee. Hopefully, Vanya will be able to sort out whatever this is on her own. 

Sure, he’d like to help her out. His siblings may be annoying bastards, but he has worked very hard to make sure they’re alive annoying bastards, and he intends to keep it that way. 

Needless to say, Five tries not to think about Ben. 

He knows that there’s nothing he could’ve done. He’d learned one thing in the Commission, and it hadn’t been the art of assassination. Five had been an assassin ever since he could talk, and the old man was a better teacher than that goon Hazel. 

No, what Five learned at the commission was that the past had to remain the past. If he’d gone back in time to save Ben, Vanya never would have written her book, and he never would have known that Ben needed to be saved in the first place. And yes, he knew that technically he had changed the future, but that may not have been possible if he’d gone far enough back to save Ben. He hopes that Ben understands. He’d had to play to the statistical advantages, and according to years of calculations, he’d arrived at just the right time to stop the apocalypse. It was every life in the world versus one. 

Still, Five tries not to think about Ben. He stopped thinking about Ben after he found Dolores. He didn’t need two friends in the Apocalypse, especially since Ben never responded to Five like Dolores did. Seriously, he put two very specific words right in Ben’s mouth and Ben couldn’t even parrot them back. Technically, Five knows that Ben couldn’t communicate with him even if he happened to be around. And Five knows that he’s stupid to hope that one day, during one of Klaus’s overdone medium sessions (yeah, we get it, you can commune with the dead. Do you really need the crystal ball?), Klaus will turn to him and say canned spaghetti. He knows it’s stupid. He knows. 

Five doesn’t sit in on many of Klaus’ medium sessions. He doesn’t visit Ben’s statue. And he doesn’t sit in the room when Vanya plays her most beautiful songs for an empty patch of air. He also doesn’t think about how Vanya used to play her songs for him. 

Vanya isn’t playing music right now, but the air is humming with the tinnitus-like sound of her powers. Five sighs and tries to cover his ears, but his left arm is pinned to his side so completely that he can’t even wiggle his fingers. He takes another sip of his cold coffee and, for the forty-first time that morning, attempts a spacial jump. For the forty-first time, he isn’t even able to lean forwards.

Five isn’t necessarily claustrophobic, but the invisible mass preventing him from moving everything except for his right hand and coffee cup is really starting to get on his nerves.

“Hey, Mom. How long have I been here?” 

“Four hours and thirty-four minutes,” she replies from across the room. “Why are you still standing there, dear?” 

“For fun,” he snaps. 

“Oh, you children and your games,” Mom laughs, coming into Five’s narrow field of vision, and Five almost gasps. Her neck is bent at almost a right angle, and half of her hair has been pulled out by the roots. At least three of her fingers are pulled completely out their sockets, dangling by just a few fraying wires. Five has killed countless people, and he’s seen the Horror emerge from Ben’s stomach, but looking at Mom in this condition almost makes him feel sick.

“Do you want any food, darling?” Mom asks. “I could make you a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. I know how much you love them.” 

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t take me a minute.” 

Five doubts that she could get a jar of peanut butter out of the refrigerator in her current condition. “Really, Mom, I’m fine. Why don’t you check on Vanya? I don’t think she’s doing well.” 

“You don’t?” Mom asks, eyebrows knitting. “Does she need her medicine?” 

“She doesn’t take that anymore.” Five tried to reprogram her to recognize Vanya’s powers and his return, but he hasn’t managed it. She still sets five places for every meal, but Five always has to drag his food over from Reginald’s chair. On the days that Vanya comes over, he pretends that he already ate.

“Yes, of course,” Mom says, laughing gently. “Silly me. You’re right, your sister doesn’t take her medicine anymore.” 

“Can you go see what’s wrong with her?” Five asks again, too aggravated to keep himself from snapping. 

“Of course,” Mom replies, smiling her unnatural smile, made even worse by the angle of her neck. Five watches as she exits the room, stopping and changing direction every time she hits an invisible obstacle. As she walks, more hair is pulled out to hang in midair and gashes appear in her dress. Just as she leaves the room, the skin of her ankle rolls down like a pair of old pantyhose (He’d tried so hard to find Dolores’ legs, but the pantyhose were the best he could do. She’d pretended that she liked them, for him, but he’d picked up on her reluctance and they were gone within a week). 

Five heaves yet another sigh and takes yet another sip of cold, bitter coffee. Hopefully, someone will come down here and find him soon. Even if they can’t get him out, maybe Diego can throw him a thermos of some goddamn warm coffee. But more importantly, he hopes Mom can help Vanya.

Grace is always surprised by how much Vanya has grown. Every time she thinks about the children, the first image on her memory chip flashes across her mind. Seven young, smiling young faces. It always takes her a minute to remember that there are only six now. Only six, and only Diego smiles at her anymore. 

Grace smooths Vanya’s hair back from her forehead, wishing she’d kept her bangs. Grace had always cut her bangs, but she doesn’t know how to offer to do so now. Vanya isn’t her little girl anymore. It’s all just so hard. 

“Are you alright, dear?” Grace asks, and Vanya’s eyelids flutter. 

“Mom?” She asks groggily. 

“Yes, dear?” 

“Where’s my violin?” Vanya bolts upright, and Grace pulls her hand back. She wishes she could still solve all of Vanya’s problems just by stroking her hair. 

“It’s right here,” Grace says, handing Vanya’s violin case over. Vanya almost tears it open, and a smile breaks across her face when she sees her violin. 

“Thanks, Mom,” she says, looking up. Immediately, her smile drops. Grace keeps her own smile stretched across her face, but she doesn’t know what she’s done wrong. Vanya had been so happy. 

“What’s the matter?” She asks, reaching a hand out to Vanya. Vanya backs away. 

“Are you okay, Mom? You…you don’t look good.” 

“Oh, well. I suppose I won’t be trying this hairstyle again!” Grace laughs, but she still doesn’t know why Vanya is backing away from her. She seems to be making all the wrong moves today. 

“No, Mom. Your neck, it’s…”

Grace reached up to touch her neck, running her hand over the smooth latex covering her internal workings. She frowns when her finger senses a piece of steel poking through her synthetic skin.

“Oh dear,” she says, fingers working to push the piece of metal back below her skin. Grace doesn’t like it when the children see her wiring. She knows that it’s silly, but she wants them to think of her as their mom. Not as their robot. 

“Are you okay?” Vanya asks. At least she isn’t moving away anymore. 

“Oh, don’t worry about me! I’m sure you father can fix it right up.” 

“Mom, Dad’s…not here. Do you remember?” 

“Yes, of course.” Grace doesn’t remember. She supposes Reginald must have gone on a trip and forgotten to tell her. He’s silly that way.

“Come on, Mom. Let’s go inside,” Vanya says, standing up with her violin case in her hand. It makes Grace happy when Vanya is confident. She isn’t confident nearly often enough. 

“Yes,” she agrees, getting to her feet. She furrows her brow slightly when her ankle peels off her steel skeleton, and picks up the discarded skin from the stoop. She has a lot of sewing ahead of her tonight. 

Grace follows Vanya inside, stopping and moving to the side each time she encounters an invisible object. She has the feeling that there’s something important happening in the kitchen, perhaps a meal that she’s left on the stove too long, but she can’t leave Vanya alone. She would never leave one of her children alone. 

Klaus is alone. Which is weird. Usually, he wakes up to Ben’s stupid face staring at him from across the room. And when Ben’s doing his voyeuristic ghosty thing somewhere else, there's always another dead person to take his place. Unless he’s high. 

Is he high? 

Nah. He’d remember, especially since he’d been clean for almost four months and Ben would throw the world’s biggest hissy fit if he even looked at the good stuff. Then Diego would probably try to cut the drugs out of him or something. Then Luther would give him a lecture on sticking to your goals, and Allison would Rumor him or at least yell at him a lot. Vanya would probably cry. Five might time travel to make sure he never took the drugs in the first place. 

High or not, he would remember that. So he definitely isn’t high.

But what happened to all the ghosts? Has Klaus somehow unconsciously mastered his powers in his sleep? Or was there a second apocalypse, except this one only affected ghosts? 

Yeah, if Klaus were hedging his bets, he’d probably say the second one. If it were that easy to make the ghosts go away, he would’ve spent his entire life asleep. 

“That would be a coma,” he hears Ben’s annoying voice say in the back of his head. 

“That would be a goddamn good time” Klaus says out loud, picking himself up off the floor. “Shut up, Ben. You aren’t even here.” 

Ben rolls his eyes, debating whether to say “I’m right here, moron” or to keep following Allison down the hallway. He decides on the latter. Somebody needs to make sure nothing else happens to her. 

Ben had been so wrapped up in the excitement that he hadn’t even considered that maybe other ghosts would be able touch things, too. That is, until he saw an older man kneeling over Allison with both hands pressed over her face. He’d stood there for a second, watching Allison scrabble at the air with tears streaming down her face. Then his autopilot had kicked in, and Ben did what he’d been trained to do since he was three years old. 

A scream wrenched itself out of Ben’s throat as his stomach ripped open and a single tentacle snaked across the room. He gripped the old man by the waist and squeezed him into a spray of blood and ghostly tissue. Allison sat up, gasping, covered in blood. The Horror lunged for her, eager to do some more damage, but Ben tugged it back with an almost superhuman effort. Ben really wasn’t sure if he could still control the Horror after all this time. For possibly the first time, he was thankful for his training. 

He contemplated patting Allison’s back or wiping some blood off her face. But as much as he wanted to touch his sister after almost twenty years of wafting straight through her, he knew that she’d just see him as another invisible person who wanted to hurt her. 

So he’s trailing behind her as she walks down the hallway, shaky on her broken heels and covered in blood she doesn’t seem to see. He’s clenching his fists and biting his lip, concentrating on the single tentacle slowly unraveling from a deep hole in his stomach. Ben doesn’t like killing people, even dead ones, but if someone tries to hurt Allison again, he’ll be ready. 

“Hey, Ben!” Klaus calls out behind him. Ben doesn’t look around.

“I’m kind of concentrating here, Klaus,” he says through gritted teeth. “Go annoy someone else, okay?” 

“Geez,” Klaus says, and Ben can picture him holding his hands up in a gesture of overdramatic innocence. “Fine. Hey, Allison! What are you…ooh. Wow.” 

“What?” Allison rasps, turning towards Klaus and, by extension, Ben. The Horror twitches towards her, and Ben forces it to retreat. He’s starting to feel a little lightheaded. Exhaustion is just another example of the memory not measuring up to the real thing.

“You’ve got a little something,” Klaus says. “Actually, you’ve got a lot of something. All over you.” 

“I don’t see anything,” Allison says, looking down at her blood sodden skin. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Klaus, but I don’t have the energy.” 

“Was this you?” Klaus asks, and Ben can’t see him but he’s pretty sure that Klaus isn’t talking to Allison anymore. 

“I did what I had to do.”

“And exactly what kind of situation would require popping a blood balloon all over our sister?” 

“A what?” Allison says, then doubles over in a coughing fit. 

“Woah,” Klaus says, rushing forward to grab her before she collapses. Ben watches his skinny junkie arms support their sister, and feels a hollow pang in the middle of his chest. 

“I’m going downstairs,” he says. No one acknowledges him. 

Ben finds Luther first. He’s hunched over at the bottom of the staircase, surrounded by a crowd of ghosts so dense that Ben can’t even tell how many there are. Like Allison, he’s covered with blood. Unlike Allison, it’s all his own. Luther’s breath is coming in short, harsh pants and his massive shoulders are trembling. 

Ben sighs. He knows what he has to do, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to enjoy it. As the other tentacles unfold and burrow their way out of his stomach wall, his scream turns into a sob. It hurts so much. Ben didn’t remember that anything could hurt this much. He wants to black out. He wants to curl up in a ball on the floor. But he has to keep his focus, or he could end up killing Luther. Lucky for Luther that he made up with Vanya and helped Klaus get clean, or maybe Ben wouldn’t be trying quite so hard. 

It takes Luther a couple of minutes to notice that they’re gone. All of them. The invisible hands that have been tearing at his clothing and raking their nails down his face, the bodies piling on top of his and weighing him down, the feet trampling on his head. They’re all gone. 

He stumbles to his numbed feet and wipes a stream of blood away from his eyes, but just succeeds in smearing even more blood across his face. He hadn’t realized just how injured he was. He hasn’t seen this much blood since Allison…he shakes his head, spattering dark red droplets onto the white marble floor. This isn’t the time to get sucked into a bad memory, and Allison’s fine now. So is Vanya. Looking back, he doesn’t know how he placed any blame on her, when he should’ve realized it was all his fault. 

He takes his first step, and his foot lands on something like an invisible banana peel and flies out from under him. He just can’t seem to get out of this comedy sketch today. He realizes too late that he’s overcompensating, and his top heavy body tips over like a domino. The tiled floor surges up to meet him, and he braces for the possibly devastating impact, but at the last moment something long and slimy wraps around his waist and lifts him high into the air. Luther closes his eyes and braces himself again, this time for a painful death by invisible sliminess, but then his feet gently touch the ground.

“Luther!” Vanya calls, and he cracks his eyes open just enough to see her running across the room.

“Be careful!” He calls back. “The floor’s like ice.” 

“Are you alright?” She asks, slowing to a walk. 

“I am. What about you?” 

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“Hello, dear,” Mom said, coming in behind Vanya. “It’s nice to see you.” 

“Hi, Mom.” 

“Hey, Mom!” Klaus says, and they all turn to see him helping Allison down the stairs. She’s trembling and coughing, and Luther wants to run across the floor and help her himself, but he knows that he wouldn’t be any use if he cracks his head open. 

“Be careful,” Luther says instead, “don’t fall. The floor’s unsafe.” 

“Yeah,” Klaus says, helping Allison down the last step, both of their heels clacking on the tile floor. “I know. It’s like a slaughterhouse in here. Has Diego started using humans for stabbing practice?” 

“What do you mean?” Luther asks, looking at the perfectly white marble floor.

“What do you mean? No, Allison, don’t step there. You’re gonna…ooh, okay. Let’s try to go around the really big pools of blood.” 

“Klaus, what are you talking about?” Vanya asks gently, which is much better than whatever Luther was on the verge of snapping. “There isn’t any blood.” 

“Yeah, there is. It’s every…oh. Was this you?” He asks a patch of empty air, then listens intently as he and Allison continue to pick their way across the floor, somehow avoiding slipping and falling. “Huh, that’s new. Impressive bloodlust,” he comments, halfway across the floor. “Five would be proud. Hey, where is Five?” 

“Silly me,” Mom says, laughing that unnatural laugh that makes Luther partially uncomfortable and partially nostalgic. “That’s what I was forgetting in the kitchen!” 

“Vanya,” Allison says, lurching away from Klaus and grabbing her arm. Luther wants to reach out and steady her, but Vanya’s already slipping under Allison’s arm and supporting her weight. “Vanya, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Vanya says immediately. “What are you sorry for?”

“I thought it was you,” Allison says, words choked and almost unrecognizable. “I was so mad. I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Vanya says, patting Allison’s back with a wince. Luther makes a mental note to have Mom look after her arm as soon as all this is over. “It’s okay, Allison. I’m not mad.”

Then the doors from the sitting room fly open and Diego rushes out onto the floor with the point of a floating knife inches from his back. 

Diego is sick of this. It isn’t like he ever liked being chased around by an invisible knife-wielding person, but the longer it goes on, the more it becomes less of an exciting challenge and more of an annoyance. Diego doesn’t want to get impaled, but if that’s the only way to stop this lunatic he might just take the blow. 

Except…if he jumps off the couch just here and then dodges and weaves around the chair, he might be able to shake off the knife for just long enough to get out into the main hall. It’s only after he’s slammed the doors open and is skidding across the weirdly slick floor that he realizes he has no idea what to actually do now that he’s here. 

“Diego?” Mom asks, and in the second he pauses to search her out among a crowd of faces (was his entire family waiting here just to watch him get humiliated?) he knows he’s just given up the lead he had on the knife. He could start running again, but he knows it’s too late. 

“I love you,” he says in a rush, so he can be sure he’ll finish before he’s stabbed. 

“Diego?” Mom asks again, furrowing her eyebrows. “What’s going on, Silly?” 

Diego closes his eyes tightly. His breath catches in his throat and he knows that if he tries to speak, he’ll stutter. He doesn’t want his last words to be stuttered. So he stands there, silent, waiting for his own knife to bury itself in his back. Probably something poetic he could say about this. If he could talk.

He hears a thudding sound getting closer and closer, maybe his heartbeat. Or maybe…he doesn’t have time to brace himself before something gigantic that can only be Luther bowls him over, and he hears his knife skittering across the floor. 

“Get off me,” he says, pushing at Luther. It’s the closest he’ll get to saying thank you. 

“Yeah,” Luther says, leaning on him even harder. Diego swears he can hear one of his ribs starting to crack. “You’re welcome.” 

“Why were you making one of your own knives chase you?” Allison asks, and Diego can’t see her from under Luther but he can tell that she’s trying not to laugh. 

“Hey,” he says, kicking at Luther until he finally moves away. “That wasn’t me, alright?” 

“Then what was it?” Luther asks skeptically, watching Diego painfully make his way to his feet. 

“I don’t know, man. Something invisible.” 

“Something invisible attacked me, too,” Luther says, moving to a cross legged position, and for the first time Diego notices that he doesn’t look good. Granted, Luther hasn’t looked good in years, but this is worse. 

“Is that why you look like an extra from a bad slasher film?” He asks. 

“Shut up,” Luther says halfheartedly. 

“Something invisible took my violin,” Vanya says quietly, clutching the violin case to her chest with one arm. Diego understands. He was upset enough about losing a knife, but Vanya only has one violin. 

“Something invisible…” Allison starts, but then her voice breaks and she starts to cry into Vanya’s shoulder. 

“Um, it’s okay,” Diego tries, scrambling across the ridiculously slippery floor to pat her hair. 

“What’s going on?” Vanya asks helplessly, stroking Allison’s back with a shaking hand. Her face is even more pinched-in than usual, which either means she’s annoyed or in pain. Diego hopes she’s just in pain. Pretty much the only thing that could make this situation worse is Vanya losing control of her emotions. 

At least she has some control to begin with. Unlike Klaus, who’s just started yelling at thin air. 

“No!” He’s saying, stomping his stiletto dramatically. Because everything Klaus does just has to be dramatic. “You’re wrong.”

“Um, Klaus?” Luther asks, sliding over the floor on his hands and knees. It looks kind of ridiculous, and Diego definitely wants to make fun of him, but this doesn’t seem to be the time. 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Klaus puts his fingers in his ears. “I’m not listening to you! Go away!” 

“…Alright,” Diego says. “I have no idea what’s going on, and neither do any of you, so let’s go find Five.” 

“Why do you think Five will know what’s going on?” Luther asks, finally standing up. 

“Because he always does,” Vanya says confidently. “It’s okay, Allison. Five will know what to do.” 

Five has no idea what to do. He’s been stuck here for going on five hours now, and Mom doesn’t seem to be coming back. He only has a couple teaspoons of coffee left (thank god for his extra large cup, or he would’ve run out hours ago) and much as he hates to admit it, he’s starting to panic. 

When he put Dolores back, he made a vow to never talk to her again. He wouldn’t disrespect her memory by pretending she was there. But right now, he’s close to cracking. This is so much like the apocalypse, lonely and trapped, except this time it’s literal. He doesn’t have Dolores, he doesn’t have his wagon, he can’t even move. Five hasn’t felt this alone since the day he buried his siblings. 

He contemplates yelling for help or breaking down in tears, but that seems a bit overdramatic. If they want to leave him here, after how hard he worked to save their sorry asses from the apocalypse, then fine. They can leave him here. He’ll suffocate or starve to death, and then maybe when only Klaus can see him they’ll realize something’s wrong. But at that point, it’ll be too late, and his stupid preteen body will be rotting on the kitchen floor. 

Five uses his extremely limited range of motion to hurl his coffee cup at the wall with a yell, but the coffee only makes it a foot before it runs up against something invisible and splashes in midair. Five raises an eyebrow as his coffee cup is carefully plucked out of the air by the shape outlined in coffee splatters—seemingly a person with a lofty up-due—and carried over to the sink. The cup then rinses itself and sets itself out to dry. 

“I don’t suppose you could get me some more coffee,” Five calls across the room, but the cup stays still and the coffee-covered figure rejoins the mass around him. “Figures,” he mutters. Then, “all I want is some goddamn coffee!” Five tries to kick something, but his foot is immobile. He slams his head against the solid air in front of him, but it doesn’t even flinch. “Stupid, arrogant, hypocritical assholes!” He fumes, pounding his fist against a wall of solid air. “I spend forty-five years trying to save their lousy asses and they don’t even have the common decency to get me some fucking coffee!” 

“Cool your rockets, bro,” Diego says from directly behind him. Five lets himself slump forwards onto a wall of air. 

“How long have you been there?” He asks in a monotone. 

“Ever since hypocritical assholes,” Allison says, voice raspy but still managing that queenly I could kill you if I wanted tone. 

“I’m sorry,” Vanya says. She sounds close to tears. Five bangs his forehead on the air again, because it hurts and he deserves it. “I’ll get you some coffee.” 

“No, Vanya, it’s—”

“Who are you talking to?” Klaus asks. Five strains his neck as far as it can go, and sees Klaus looking aimlessly around the room. 

“Five,” Luther says. 

“Really?” Klaus asks. “Five’s here?” 

“Yeah,” Diego says, sounding as confused as he did the time Five tried to teach him calculus. “He’s literally the only other person in the room.” 

“Huh,” Klaus says, looking across the room. There are about fifty people in here. Children and adults of every nationality, dressed for barn raisings and the Oscars, talking in languages Klaus knows and languages he’s never heard. He tries to tune them out, to listen to his family, but he keeps hearing the number five. It’s beginning to really freak him out. “Well, can you ask him to come a little closer? I can’t hear him. Or see him.” 

Nobody answers, and the voices swell louder and louder around him. Ben is watching him with an unbearably smug expression, and he sticks his tongue out at him, but he’s really kinda glad that self-important jerk is here. At least someone else sees what he can see. 

“I said,” Klaus starts again after a minute with no response, “can you ask him to—”

“We know what you said,” Luther cuts him off, and Klaus covers his far ear to hear him better. “And Five just answered you. Can’t you knock it off for four minutes?”

“Just pretend that I’m not trying to be annoying here,” Klaus says, “and tell me what Five said. Can you do that? Please?” 

“I could tell you,” Ben says in a sing-song voice, stepping closer to him. “But you’d have to say you’re sorry.” 

Klaus ignores him.

“…he’s trapped,” Vanya is saying. “Those invisible things.” 

“They’re everywhere today,” Allison says. “One of them…it choked me. It almost killed me. I don’t know why it stopped.” 

“I killed him,” Ben says, stepping even closer to Klaus. “The Horror killed the man choking her, and that’s why she’s covered with blood.”

“I’m sure there’s another perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Allison’s covered in blood,” Klaus says. “Besides, nobody asked you. Nobody wants you around.” 

“Fine,” Ben says, holding up his hands, still smirking. “Ask Allison why she’s covered in blood. Ask Luther why those invisible things stopped scratching him.” 

“Allison’s not covered in blood,” Vanya says, concerned. Klaus wonders how she and Ben survived childhood in this house and are still able to be unashamedly concerned. “Klaus, are you sure you haven’t relapsed?” 

“No!” Klaus says indignantly. “I’ve been sober for…oh. Okay. I get it, you’re right. Rub it in my face if you want.” 

“Oh, I want,” Ben says. 

“Yeah, whatever. In an hour I’ll be blackout drunk and you’ll be but a distant whiny memory.” 

“Klaus, you aren’t drinking again!” Allison says. “You’re doing so well, we’re all so proud of you.” 

“We won’t let you get drunk.” Luther crosses his arms and steps directly in front of Klaus. 

“Yeah,” says Diego, reaching for a knife. “What he said.”

“Seriously?” Ben asks. “You aren’t even going to try to work this out. You’re just going to poison yourself. Jesus, Klaus.” 

“Okay,” Klaus says. “This is heartwarming and Hallmark and all that, but you’re going to have to let me get drunk.” 

“No, we’re not,” Vanya says, stepping to stand directly in front of Klaus. “And honestly, there’s no way you’re getting past us.” It’s kind of nice to see her taking control, but does she really have to do it now? 

“You’re going to let me past if you ever want to see Five again,” Klaus snaps. 

“Is that a threat?” Luther asks. 

“No, it’s a fact. If you ever want to see Five again, and stop getting beaten up and choked to death, you’re going to let me get drunk. And don’t even start, Ben, you know you can’t take them all.” 

“What are you talking about?” Allison asks, knotting her hands in her hair.

“You want to know what I’m talking about?” Klaus asks, sweeping his hands to his sides. The spirits are starting to notice him, now. He’s hearing less Five and more Four. “Touch her.” 

“What?”

“Really?” Ben asks, face lighting up. Klaus beckons him on like an annoyed and underpaid airplane conductor. Ben steps forwards and lightly touches Allison on the arm, and it kind of hurts how fast his face falls when she jumps backwards. Klaus should’ve known. 

“What was that?” Allison asks, looking around wildly. Luther puts an arm around her, and Vanya steps in front of them. It’s weird how quickly she’s identified herself as the most powerful member of the defunct Academy, and how quickly everyone else seems to have accepted it. Klaus still sees her as his sweet—if slightly mopey—sister.

On the other hand, everyone else still sees Ben as a tragic seventeen year old hero. 

“That was Ben,” Klaus says quietly, so quietly he can’t hear himself over the shouts of the ghosts. “I’ve been sober for four months, and I made them all corporeal, and I can’t control it. Now please, please, please just let me get drunk.” 

“That was Ben?” Allison echos, fingers clasping protectively around her throat. 

“Yeah.” He just wants to sleep. Get drunk, and then sleep. He feels his legs give way, and he lets himself sink ungracefully to the ground. “Apparently you also have him to thank for getting rid of the ghosts beating you up.” 

“Uh, thanks,” Luther says, waving in Ben’s general direction. Ben rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Klaus half wishes that everyone else could see him too, but that would mean that they could also see all the other ghosts crowding around them right now, and that would not be good.

Ben wishes that he wasn’t able to see the ghosts closing in around them. 

Well, if he’s really wishing for things, he wishes that he was alive or that he could go five minutes without his family members almost dying or almost killing each other. But whatever. At least being dead means he can keep the other ghosts away from his family. 

He doesn’t call the Horror, not yet. He’s already done it twice today, which is pretty much all he could handle even at the peak of his training. He’s not sure if it’ll obey him next time, or if he’ll become just another ghost trying to kill the living. So he’s going to keep his hat trick until the last possible minute, but that doesn’t mean he can’t fight the encroaching ghosts in other ways. 

It feels good, his fist connecting with a half-decapitated woman’s nose as she lunges at Diego. Her head snaps back, then further back, then hangs down behind her by a flap of skin and partially severed bone.

“Eew,” Klaus says.

“What?” Allison asks, but she’s drowned out by the increase in the other ghosts’ yelling. Klaus covers his ears with both hands and ducks like a mortar is about to land. Ben punches a teenager bleeding out of his eyes (Allison, most likely) and roundhouse kicks a man in full riot gear with a fork plunged into his eyeball. Looks like Five’s handiwork. 

Ben looks around and notices with a vague feeling of dread that the ghosts seem to be going directly for him now. 

“Um, Klaus?” He says, sinking into a well-remembered fighting stance. “Vanya? A little help?” 

Klaus doesn’t answer, and Vanya can’t hear him. Great. Just like always, the hard part is up to him. 

Ben backs up slowly, trying to keep the mass of ghosts focused on him. At least he can see them. The rest of his family, even Luther, even Vanya, and especially Klaus, are sitting ducks. 

It’s fifty against one. Ben doesn’t stand a chance, and it’s getting to the point where the Horror won’t, either. So Ben makes the tactical decision. 

“Get up!” He yells, shaking Klaus by the shoulder.

“Shut up,” Klaus mumbles. 

“You’re a goddamn soldier, and you’re the only hope those others have. Do you want Five to watch his family die again? Do you want to die again?” 

“If I die, can I get rid of you?” 

Ben’s going to pretend that didn’t hurt. He looks back over his shoulder. The line of ghosts is closer than ever. 

“You could get rid of me any time you want if you’d just get control over your fucking powers!” Ben shakes him again, for good measure, and because he’s wanted to give Klaus a good shake for a very long time. “You’re the one who’s making this happen. Not me. Not even the ghosts. You. So what are you going to do about it? 

Klaus takes a deep breath (Ben misses taking breaths) and slowly raises his head from his arms. “I hate you,” he hisses. Ben rolls his eyes. Then Klaus grabs Luther’s arm and pulls himself to his feet. 

“Finally,” Ben says. “Thank you, Four.” 

Klaus’ eyes soften, just a bit. “You owe me, Six.”

Ben nods, then grabs a knife out of Diego’s ridiculous leather belt. He slashes at the nearest ghost—a man with sucker marks on his arms and his throat torn out, Ben recognizes his own handiwork when he sees it—but the wound barely seems to slow him down.

“My knife!” Diego yells, and even in the face of fifty something angry ghosts, Ben almost laughs. His voice is higher than Vanya’s. “It got my knife again! It’s going to kill me!”

“No, Ben got your knife,” Klaus says, “and out of everyone in this room, he’s probably the least likely to kill you. But by all means, please keep screaming.” 

“Oh,” Diego says sheepishly. “As long as he gives it back.” 

“Yeah, because that’s our biggest problem right now.” Ben dodges a punch and slashes at a woman stumbling towards Allison with outstretched arms (why is everyone so interested in choking Allison?) but he doesn’t have Diego’s knife training. The woman stumbles on, and so does every other ghost set on killing his family. 

“Allison,” Klaus says, “Move backwards.” Then he turns to Ben. “I know you don’t want to,” he says. “I know it’s hard. But you’re going to have to in a minute.” 

“Tell me when.” Ben sets his jaw and slashes again, but he knows where his fighting power lies. He can feel the Horror writhing in anticipation. If he has to go down, at least he’ll go down protecting his family. 

Again. 

“Come on, Allison! Move back. Please.”

Allison stumbles backwards in her mismatched heels. She doesn’t know why she hasn’t taken her broken shoe off. She doesn’t know why she’s obeying orders from Klaus either. But apparently, her dead brother just saved her from a murderous ghost, so it’s just that kind of day. 

“Vanya,” Klaus says. “How do you control your powers?” 

“Um…I guess I just listen to a sound and let it resonate within me,” Vanya says. “Why?” 

“Because I have to learn to control my powers in, like, five seconds or we’re all going to die. Are you sure that’s it?” 

“My—my violin helps,” Vanya stutters. “Sorry, did you say we’re going to die in five seconds?” 

“Ben,” Klaus says, turning to a completely empty patch of air. “You’re powers are some freaky-deaky shit, right? How do you control them?” 

Allison wishes she could help. She’s had to control her powers, too, but not in the way Klaus or Ben or Vanya have. All she ever had to do was not say those specific words at the wrong time, or to the wrong person, and she failed. She built her life on a lie, and she lost everything.

“I’ve never had any self control!” Klaus snaps at thin air, where Allison knows Ben is standing. He saved her life, and she freaked out when he touched her. What kind of sister is she? 

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, and her fingers stick to her biceps. Klaus said that she looked like someone had popped a blood balloon over her. She wishes he hadn’t. She’s deeply familiar with the feeling of being covered in blood, and the awful stickiness is just bringing her back to that night again. Throat slit by her own sister, gasping on the floor of a murderer's house, sure that she wasn’t going to survive. 

“It’s getting a little cramped in here,” Five calls in a strained voice, breaking her out of her flashback. She feels cramped, too. Cramped, sticky, and useless. 

“It’ll be okay, Five!” Vanya scrabbles at her violin case, but she winces every time she moves her arm. Allison wants to help her, so badly, but even she can’t heal arms on command. 

She looks at Diego, stuffing knives into his pockets to keep them away from the ghosts. Then Luther, standing in front of her, blocking her from invisible assailants. She should be out there, fighting with her family. 

“You’re useless,” Klaus says, sticking his tongue out at nothing. “No, I will not.” 

“I can help,” Allison says, before she’s even conscious of forming the thought.

“What?” Luther asks. 

“Klaus,” she says, voice rasping painfully. “I could help you.” 

“Okay, loving the positive attitude.” Klaus claps his hands together. “How can you help?” 

“I could Rumor you,” she says, and every single one of her family members takes a step away from her. Even Luther. Probably even Ben. 

“Uh, no thanks,” Klaus says, laughing nervously. “Back to the drawing board!”

“No,” she says, taking an awkward step forward. “I’d take it off as soon as I could, and I’d only do it if you agreed.” Probably. Allison’s never been big on self control, either. “I could just Rumor you to have perfect control over your powers, or maybe even Rumor the ghosts to leave us alone.” 

“If you can do that,” Vanya says, taking a step towards Allison that is somehow worse than backing away, “why didn’t you just rumor me to have perfect control over my powers? Why did you make me think I was useless for my entire life?” 

“I was six,” Allison fires back. She should probably be trying to calm down, trying to calm Vanya down. Bad things happen when Vanya gets angry. “I did what Dad told me to do, okay? Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have done the same.” 

“I wouldn’t have!” Vanya shouts. Allison notices with a pang of fear that her eyes are starting to lighten. They’re entering the danger zone. “Not if it meant I was hurting you!” 

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, holding her hands up but not retreating. “I’m sorry.” 

“I spent twenty minutes outside the door today, standing in the rain, because I knew you didn’t want me. You’ve never wanted me.” 

“Vanya!” Allison gasps, throat seizing painfully. “No, that’s not true.” 

“Are you sure we couldn’t do this some other time?” Klaus asks, putting his body in between Vanya and Allison. Allison cranes her neck, but Vanya’s turned away from her, shoulders heaving. “Because those ghosts are really getting close, and Ben’s in trouble…yes, you are! You can’t hold off a hundred—fine, fifty, on your own.”

“Fifty?” Diego asks. “Man, that’s a lot.” 

“That’s nothing,” Klaus says. “Wait until my old friends in the mausoleum figure out they’re corporeal. Let’s just hope the doors aren’t open.” 

“Mausoleum?” Allison asks. “We have a mausoleum?” 

“Well, yeah,” Klaus says, scrunching his eyebrows together. “You guys didn’t know about the mausoleum? Where did you think I was when I left the house for a few days?” 

“Getting drugs?” Diego asks. “Or, like, running away?” 

“You went to a mausoleum?” Vanya asked, turning back to face Klaus, eyes back to their normal brown. 

“You’re not the only one Dad locked in a scary room, Vanny,” Klaus says, pinching Vanya’s cheek and laughing. Laughing. Why is he laughing? 

“Dad locked you in a mausoleum?” Luther asks, eyes flicking to Vanya. He’d cried on Allison’s shoulder, the day after the apocalypse didn’t happen. He kept saying that he could never forgive himself for locking Vanya away. 

“Yeah, why did you think I was so afraid of ghosts? And the dark?” Klaus says, raising an eyebrow. “Man, next you’ll be telling me you don’t know you got me killed.” Luther makes a cut-off choking sound, and Allison wraps her arm around his waist. 

“Killed you?” Luther asks. “What?” 

“Luther,” Five yells from the other side of the room, loudly enough that even Klaus looks in his direction. “If you got him killed after I spent forty five years trying to keep him alive I swear to god…” 

“God? Yeah, She has a cool bike. I met her when Luther’s dance partner’s boyfriend smashed my head on the club floor and sent me to the afterlife.” 

Allison wants to think that this is some kind of weird drug induced hallucination, but Klaus seems so sincere. Besides, compared to some of the things that have happened in her life, Klaus meeting god is almost laughably normal. 

“Wow,” Klaus says, surveying their shocked expressions. “We should really talk more. Remind me to tell you about the Vietnam War at some point. Anyway, Allison, let’s do it.” 

“What?” She asks. She tries to go back over the thread of the conversation, but her mind is buzzing with mausoleum and death and every protective instinct she has for every other member of the Academy. 

“Come on,” he says. “They’re massing an attack right now, we don’t have much time. Just rumor me to be in control—yes, it’s a good idea. I trust her.” Allison bites her lip. Nobody should trust her anymore, not after what she did to Vanya. To Claire. “..you don’t want to have to pull out the Horror again, right? Yeah, I thought so.” He turns back to Allison, swiping his hair back from his forehead. “Come on, sis. Hit me.” 

“Are you sure?” She asks.

“This was your idea,” Klaus says impatiently. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says. 

“Yeah, I don’t want Casper to kill you all because of me,” Klaus says. “Come on, just do it. I’m ready.” 

“If you’re sure,” Allison says. “It can be scary. You might feel like you aren’t in control of your own body, you might—”

“I don’t need the disclaimer, okay? Whatever happens, I can do it. Whatever it is, I’ve been through worse. Come on, Ben, I know what I’m doing. Just stab her, okay? She’s screaming a lot and it’s really distracting. No, Ma’am, not you. You’re lovely. Okay, stay back. Just stay back. Allison? Please? Now would be a great time.” 

Klaus’ eyes are darting around the seemingly empty room, and he’s moving back and forth like a boxer in a ring. Allison doesn’t want to Rumor her brother. She never wants to Rumor anyone again. 

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her throat still hurts, an awful reminder of the last time she tried a Rumor. She jumps when she feels a hand on her arm, and her twisted ankle twinges. 

“It’s okay,” Vanya says. She opens her arms to see her sister looking up at her, almost smiling. Vanya hasn’t smiled at her in months. “I believe in you.” 

Well, it’s not forgiveness. But at least it’s close. 

“I heard a Rumor,” Allison says, stepping closer to Klaus. Her voice barely rasps, and she can feel power surging behind her words. She’d forgotten how good this feels. “that you have perfect control over your powers.” 

Her effect, as always, is instantaneous. Klaus’ head jerks towards the ceiling, and a pulse of blue light radiates out from where he’s standing. Suddenly, Allison can see a mass of mutilated bodies crowded around them. And there, standing next to Klaus, is Ben. He doesn’t look like he did on that horrible day, but he has the same outfit and the same look of intense concentration as he slashes and stabs. 

“Ben,” Vanya says, barely audible over the sudden screaming of the ghosts. Is this what Klaus lives with every day? 

For the first time in years, Allison is almost grateful for her power. 

Ben turns around, and smiles. Allison had almost forgotten what Ben’s smile looked like. The only pictures she has of him are the portraits. He yells something back, waves his left hand while his right hand continues to beat back the other ghosts. 

“Klaus?” Mom asks, from behind her. Allison had almost forgotten Mom was there. She’s always so quiet. “What are you doing, dear?” 

Grace isn’t programmed to be afraid. Scared doesn’t do any good, not in a house full of silly superheroes. She hadn’t been afraid when Diego had switched her off, just upset for him. She hadn’t been afraid when Vanya used to twist her head around and slam her against the wall, just determined to teach her better manners. 

But right now, Grace is just a bit perturbed. She isn’t programmed to deal with this. 

“Come down from there, silly,” she says, looking up at her darling son, who is slowly rotating in midair. “You’re going to make yourself sick.” 

“Klaus?” Ben asks, staring up at his brother. Grace is malfunctioning, looking at Number Six again after all these years. Her memory chip is saying that he’s dead, but he’s right here, glowing blue. Her precious boy, with no life signs or thermal reading. 

“Hello, Ben, dear.” she says, taking a step towards him. “My, how you’ve grown.” 

“Mom,” he says, in a trembling voice, not looking away from his floating brother. “Hey.” 

“I’m sorry I didn’t set a place at the table for you,” she says. “I’m such a scatterbrain.”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Thank you, dear. I’ll make sure to set it from now on.” Ben nods, then stabs at an oncoming ghost. Grace wishes she could help him, but she’s never been the fighter in the family. 

“Klaus?” Allison asks. Grace doesn’t like the sound of Allison’s voice. It had just gotten back to normal, after that nasty fight with her sister. Grace wishes that her children could just get along. Sometimes, she wonders if part of it is her fault. 

“Yep,” Klaus answers. He’s still spinning around like Diego’s special twisted knife, arms tucked to his sides and eyes closed. He’s still glowing blue, like Grace’s hands do sometimes when one of her wires is loose. 

“Why are you levitating?” Luther says warily, taking a step towards Klaus. Grace notices that Klaus has risen about a foot since the last time she calculated his distance from the ground. Lucky Luther grew up so nice and tall.

“Oh, am I?” Klaus asks, opening his eyes. They’re still brown, which is a relief to Grace. She’s never liked it when one of her children’s eyes start to glow. She thinks their eyes are beautiful just the way they are. 

“Yes, you moron,” Five says, blinking into view just beneath Klaus. 

“Ah,” Klaus says, his rotations per minute slowing from fifteen to three. “I didn’t think that would be happening yet.” 

“What?” Vanya shouts up to him. 

“I usually start floating after—how many months sober, Ben?” 

“Seven,” Ben calls, dodging a punch. 

“Seven months sober,” Klaus repeats. 

“We heard Ben the first time, silly,” Grace says, stepping forwards and putting her arm around Five. He tenses up just a bit, but Grace doesn’t think he’s upset. “Now why don’t you come down and join the rest of your siblings?” 

“You heard Ben?” Klaus raises an eyebrow, and starts to descend. “Weird.” 

“No, what’s weird is that you haven’t gotten rid of these ghosts yet,” Five snaps. “Come on, Klaus. They’re still trying to kill us, and you’re up there playing frickin’ Peter Pan.” 

“Hey,” Klaus says, drifting lower. “I would make a great Peter Pan.” 

“You don’t like children and you’d have to wear the same outfit every day,” Ben says, huffing an exasperated breath. Grace’s memory chip has been deteriorating. She didn’t remember how Ben used to do that. “Now just get rid of us.” 

Grace doesn’t like Ben referring to himself as one of the ghosts. He’s still one of her children, and being dead doesn’t change the fact that he should stay here, with his family. If she’d been just a bit better with her hands, or if she’d made sure he got along better with his siblings, maybe he’d never have died in the first place. 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Klaus mutters. Grace’s audio detector, calibrated especially for her children’s voices, zooms in on the sound. It really is quite noisy in here. “Okay, I’ll get rid of them.” 

Klaus throws his arms out to his sides, and flips in midair until his feet are parallel to the ground, 1.4 meters up. Grace hopes he’s being careful. She thinks that Luther is in range to catch him, just in case he falls.

Klaus tosses his head back, and another pulse of blue light radiates out across the room. The shouts of the ghosts dull to a murmur, then a whisper, then nothing at all. Klaus falls to the floor in a heap. Grace sighs in disappointment. Luther didn’t even step forwards. 

Luther feels frozen. 

He feels like he did when he was strapped to the gurney, slowly bleeding out, Dad shouting about serums and Mom deadly silent. He’s afraid to move, afraid to unbalance the delicate calm. He knows, dimly, that the screaming stopped, but his mind doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. 

Number Four. Number Four just accidentally summoned an army of the dead, almost killed all of them multiple times, levitated ten feet off the ground, and then defeated the threat. By himself. The druggie, the failure, the world’s second most annoying brother (it was hard to beat Diego) had just given a display of power that almost rivaled Vanya’s. 

Klaus is so much more powerful than Luther has ever given him credit for. And Luther just found out that he was locked in a mausoleum for days at a time (Luther should’ve stopped it, he was the team leader) and that Luther had actually killed him. 

He’d never been afraid of Klaus. Much as he hated to admit it, he used to use Klaus as a punching bag because he was the only Academy member who wouldn’t punch back. But now, with deep scratches covering his skin and blood trickling from the open wound on his head, he knows that Klaus can do much more than punch back. And now that Klaus has control over his powers, what’s to keep Klaus from siccing another herd of ghosts on him? He’d deserve it. He knows he’d deserve it. Any one of his siblings could kill him, and he’d deserve it. 

“Are you okay?” He asks, not stepping forwards. He’s learned it isn’t good to touch people with cataclysmic powers. Besides, he’s not sure how Vanya would react to him moving towards Klaus right now. 

“Peachy,” Klaus says with a groan, rolling over. His hair is matted to one side, and his jaw is beginning to swell. Luther almost smiles when he notices that Klaus’ mascara is still perfect. 

“You moron!” Luther almost chokes when he sees Ben marching across the floor towards Klaus. He’s known that Ben was around, sure, but this is different.

“What?” Klaus asks, awkwardly scrambling to a half sitting position. Luther wants to help him up, but he’s already hurt Klaus so much. He doesn’t know if Klaus would accept his help, anymore. He doesn’t know if his siblings would even let him try. 

“Oh, don’t play dumb. Why the hell would you let Allison Rumor you? You know how that’s always turned out. Not to mention your little floating stunt. Can’t you do just one thing without a one man Cirque du Soleil performance? That woman with her face ripped off—“

“No Face Nancy?”

“Whatever. She was about to snap Five’s neck. If you’d waited one more second to make her incorporeal he’d be dead right now, and you’d have another pissed off brother haunting your ass forever. Is that what you want, Klaus?”

“He didn’t die,” Klaus says, sounding as washed out as a spirit. Luther looks over at Five, who shows absolutely no reaction to the news that he was seconds away from death. 

“Don’t even start. You could have killed all of them today. I had to pull out the Horror twice. Twice, Klaus! Do you know what Allison and Luther could look like right now? And all because you didn’t want to start training yet.” 

“Hey, I think we’re equally bad at controlling our powers.” 

“Yeah? Well, I didn’t actually hurt anyone I didn’t want to. What is it going to take for you to admit you need to train?” Ben crouched down in front of Klaus, face to face with him. “Don’t you want to see Dave?” 

“Who’s Dave?” Luther asks. 

“How do you know about Dave?” Klaus says, turning his head so quickly that Luther hears his neck crack. 

“Ben just said something about Dave,” Allison says. Her head is bowed, hair covering her face, but Luther’s pretty sure that what Ben said about her powers really got to her. Ben never used to be like this. 

“You can hear Ben?” Klaus asks, turning to Ben with his eyebrows raised. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.” 

“I guess she wasn’t kidding about perfect control,” Ben says, sounding equally shocked.

Luther knows it must suck to be constantly together, and for Ben to never be able to talk to anyone outside of Klaus. But hearing both sides of their conversation just drives home how close they are, how much they care about each other. Luther hasn’t been able to talk to anyone like that in…well, there was Allison but that was different.

“Do you think I could—” Klaus says, breaking off in the middle of his sentence with a groan. 

“I don’t see why not,” Ben responds. “He must want to see you, too. That helps.” 

“And the rest of them?” 

“Probably. As long as you actually practice instead of moping around like Vanya.” Luther hadn’t expected Ben to act like this. He’d always been so quiet, compliant, un-opinionated. So much like Luther. Except that Ben was nice, and Luther has been realizing more and more clearly that he was not. Ben used to comfort Vanya after Luther made her cry. Luther hopes their roles haven’t been reversed. 

“You are aware they can hear you?” Klaus asks. 

“Oh,” Ben says. “No. I forgot.” He turns around slowly, face shadowed by his hood. Luther still has a piece of that hood, in his top drawer. He’d snatched it off Ben’s hospital bed, trying not to look at his face. He’d pretended he was going to give it to Vanya or Klaus, and that he was just keeping it for a little while. He hated to admit that he needed something to remind him of his brother. 

“I’m so sorry, Vanya. Allison. Really, I’m sorry,” Ben says. Hands in pockets, looking down at the ground. Luther had seen just a glimpse of Ben’s face in battle, and he barely recognized him. Was this what it had been like for Five? Going back to a family that had moved on without him? 

“You never apologize to me,” Klaus gripes, using Ben’s jacket to pull himself to his feet. Luther still wants to help. His training is screaming at him to help. 

“I apologize to people who deserve it,” Ben says, pretending to shove Klaus away in a motion that actually stabilizes his stance. Luther makes a mental note of the exact maneuver. It’s impressive. 

“I forgive you,” Allison says. She’s unwrapped her arms from Luther’s waist, and he’s not that disappointed. He’s just glad she can stand on her own. “It’s nice to see you again, Ben.” 

“You too, Allison,” Ben says with a brief smile. 

“It’s okay,” Vanya says, walking up to Ben. Luther wishes he could unstick himself long enough to do the same. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Ben tells Vanya. She knows he did mean it, but it doesn’t matter. So what if she’s mopey? That’s much nicer than, say, world-destroying or useless. 

“It’s okay,” she says again, reaching up to push his hoodie back.

Ben doesn’t look the same. He’s older. Less bloody. More sarcastic, but who could blame him after almost twenty years with Klaus? 

“Thanks for playing for me,” he says, smiling at her. It looks a bit stiff, like he hasn’t smiled in a while. Well, neither has she. “I especially liked that cover of ‘Toxic’ Klaus made you learn last week.” 

“Really?” She asks. “You listened to that?” 

“Of course,” he says. “It was amazing.” 

“I thought…I thought maybe you just left the room. Or maybe Klaus made it up.” 

“Come on, Vanny, you really think I’m that good at lying?” Klaus says, ruffling her hair. She doesn’t really like people touching her hair, but she’d never tell Klaus. 

“Well, tell us who Dave is and we’ll see,” Allison says. Even missing a heel and most of her voice, she makes the note in Vanya’s mind rise in pitch. Vanya wants to forgive her. She wants to realize she’s hurt Allison just as badly as Allison has hurt her. But hearing her use her powers again…

“Is this really the best time?” Klaus asks. He sounds exhausted. They’re all exhausted. 

“Let’s go to Griddy’s,” Vanya says. 

“What?” Luther asks. Vanya tries to read his tone, but she’s too tired for social cues. She hopes she didn’t just step over a big red line. 

“We’re all tired,” she says, voice shaking. “Ben hasn’t eaten in fifteen years, and Mom needs some…surgery before she can cook. Let’s go to Griddy’s, and maybe Klaus can tell us there.” 

“Finally, someone with a brain,” Five says. He just stood in the middle of an empty room for almost five hours, then blinked on an empty stomach. He’d happily kill for some coffee, but getting some by driving his siblings down the street wouldn’t be bad. 

“Give me five minutes to change my shoes,” Allison says. She’s tempted to ask one of her most powerful siblings to come with her, just in case someone else decides it's time to cut off her airflow. Every breath hurts, and she’s going to have to wear a scarf to cover up the ring of bruises she’s sure are encircling her neck. 

“I’ll go with you,” Ben says. Allison shoots him a grateful look. He knows what it’s like to live with the constant danger of death by supernatural forces. He’s determined not to let another one of his siblings go the same way he did. That, and the fact that he’s waited fifteen years to have a solo conversation with someone other than Klaus. 

“And leave me all alone?” Klaus says, one hand on his chest and eyebrows raised. Ben rolls his eyes and lets go of Klaus. “If you turn incorporeal, it’s your own fault!” He calls after him, but Ben and Allison are already walking out the kitchen door. Sure, Klaus and Ben haven’t been together every single minute for the last fifteen years. But he still isn’t quite sure how to function on his own.

Oh well. Donuts will help. 

Diego hasn’t been back to Griddy’s since Eudora died. He’s afraid that some kind of dumb PTSD thing will happen, and he’ll freak. But he’s been chased around by an invisible person with a knife, gotten his brother back from the dead, and he wants a donut. Being with his family isn’t the worst idea, he guesses. He just hopes Luther won’t be too annoying. 

Luther wants to tell Vanya her idea was good, and he should’ve thought of it himself. He doesn’t know if that’s the right thing to say. Dad taught him to never second guess himself, but that seems to be all he can do recently. At least he knows what kind of donut he likes. 

Grace watches her children leave the kitchen, waving goodbye to each. It’s nice to see them doing something together. She misses how they used to sneak out of the house, and how she used to pretend she didn’t hear the muffled footsteps and giggles. She hopes there will be laughter this time, too. She hopes they don’t make Vanya feel excluded, and that Ben and Klaus talk to people outside of each other, and that Luther and Diego don’t fight. She hopes Five isn’t too annoyed, and that Allison doesn’t tire her voice out too quickly. 

Somehow, Grace thinks that just this once, her children might finally get along.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! This story was my main NaNoWriMo project this November, and I really enjoyed writing it. It was fun experimenting with so many different points of view, and working with so many people in conversations. I hope that you enjoyed reading it as well! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are chicken soup for this poor author's soul. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate knowing what you think! Please stay safe out there, and I love you all.


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